The Pathological Voice of Gilbert-Louis Duprez

Author(s): Gregory W. Bloch

Source: Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 19, No. 1, The Divo and the Danseur: On the
Nineteenth-Century Male Opera and Ballet Performer (Mar., 2007), pp. 11-31
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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Cambridge Opera Journal, 19, 1,
11?31
?
2007
Cambridge University
Press
doi:10.1017/S0954586707002248
The
pathological
voice of Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
GREGORY W. BLOCH
Abstract: The tenor Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
is
today
remembered for his invention of the 'C
from the
chest',
first
presented
to Parisian audiences in 1837. This has
retrospectively
been
mythologised
as the
origin-point
of modern tenor
technique, though
recent research has
thrown the exact nature and
significance
of
Duprez's
achievement into doubt.
Nonetheless,
one context in which
Duprez
was understood as
revolutionary
was in the scientific work of two
Lyonnais doctors,
Paul
Diday
and
Joseph P?trequin,
whose 1840
essay
'M?moire sur une
nouvelle
esp?ce
de voix chant?e' offers a
unique perspective
not
only
on what
Duprez
sounded
like,
but also on
developments
in the
understanding
of the
physiological phenomenon
of
singing
itself.
Placing
this work in the context of earlier medical
writings
on the
voice,
and of
the authors'
subsequent
debate with the
singing
teacher Manuel Garcia
Jr., suggests
that the late
1830s were a
period
of flux in the
history
of the
understanding
of
singing,
one in which
long-held
certainties were
being questioned. Duprez
thus arrived in Paris at a
unique
moment.
The
changing conceptual background shaped
the
understanding
of
Duprez's
voice even as the
tenor was used
by
the doctors as a
'living experiment'
to reach conclusions about the function
of the voice
generally.
On 16
May
1840 subscribers to the
Gazette
m?dicale de
Paris,
a
weekly newspaper
directed at Paris's
practising
medical
professionals,
were
greeted
on
the first
page
with
an article under the
general heading 'Physiologie exp?rimentale'.
The
Gazette
usually
had one
long
article
per issue,
typically
on a
topic
related to clinical
practice,
and so a
significant portion
of the
paper's readership,
less interested in abstract
physiological
research than in
practical surgical technique, may
have
stopped reading
before
they
even
got
to the title.
(Perhaps they
were more
drawn to the
feuilleton
at
the bottom of the
page,
the second in a
series of editorials on child labour
laws.)
Those who read the 'M?moire sur une nouvelle
esp?ce
de voix
chant?e',
by
Paul
Diday
and
Joseph P?trequin,
would have found an ambitious and almost
unique
project:
an
attempt by
two doctors not
only
to account for musical
phenomena
using
the tools of
science,
but also to reach
general
conclusions about human
physiology
?
specifically
the
role,
during singing,
of the
position
of the
larynx,
the
state of the
glottis
and the
quantity
of air from the
lungs
?
based
on
observations
made in the
opera
house.1
The 'new
species
of voice' is
a tenor voice
primarily
identified with Gilbert-Louis
Duprez, though
the authors claim that
Duprez
had
already spawned
a
crowd of
imitators. Three
years
before the M?moire
appeared,
in
April
1837,
the tenor had
caused a sensation at the Paris
Op?ra
as Arnold in Rossini's Guillaume Tell. He had
inherited the role from its creator
Adolphe
Nourrit,
and the conflict between the
Versions of this article were read at the 69th Annual
Meeting
of the American
Musicological
Society, Seattle,
November
2004,
and the
Faculty
of
Music, Cambridge University,
March 2005.
Paul
Diday
and
Joseph P?trequin,
'M?moire sur une nouvelle
esp?ce
de voix
chant?e',
Galette
m?dicale de
Paris, 8(16 May 1840), 305-14,
hereafter the M?moire.
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12
Gregory
W. Bloch
two has been
mythologised
and
remythologised
ever since. As
recently
as
2003,
a
New York Times article about
a
crop
of new tenors retold the
story
as
nothing
less
than an
origin-myth
of the modern tenor voice:
As the
practice
of
altering pre-pubescent boys
started to seem a rather brutal
way
to
groom
an
opera star,
castratos went out of fashion.
Sweet,
lightweight
tenor voices
again
became
the norm.
That
is,
until Gilbert
Duprez.
This celebrated French tenor
began
his career in 1825 as
a
19-year-old agile lyric
tenor,
a 'tenore di
grazia',
to use the traditional Italian
terminology.
In
1831,
at the Italian
premier
of the Rossini's Guillaume
Tell,
Duprez
became the first tenor
known to take his
husky
chest voice
up
to a
high
C. Rossini likened the sound to 'the
squawk
of a
capon
with its throat cut'. But the
pragmatic
Rossini soon
got
used to it as he
watched the
increasingly
frenzied reaction to
Duprez's singing.
The 'tenore di forza' was
born,
and the
public
has never
stopped loving
the voice.
. . .
Duprez's
success drove his
slightly
older
rival,
Adolph
Nourrit,
to a
premature
retirement,
an
attempted, hapless
return
(made
worse
by
a liver
ailment)
and,
finally,
suicide at 37.
(He
jumped
from a hotel
balcony
after a
ragged performance.)
All because of that chest-voice
high
C.2
It is a
good story, though
one that does not
entirely
conform to the facts. To
begin,
it was not
Duprez's
success that drove Nourrit to
retirement,
but rather Nourrit's
worsening
illness that created the
opening
for
Duprez's
debut.3 As the
story
developed,
however,
the
underlying
idea became conventional wisdom:
Duprez's
singing
was
revolutionary;
he used
registers
in a
fundamentally
new
way,
creating
the
'C from the
chest',
the ut de
poitrine,
the do di
petto.
With
Duprez,
a new
voice-type
was born.
It is
unquestionable
that
Duprez
was an
extraordinary singer.
His debut in 1837
was indeed a
triumph.
However, many
at the time seem not to have noticed his
innovative use of
registers
or the newness of his
technique generally.
A reader
familiar with accounts such as that above
may
be
surprised
to discover how
many
other
things
critics found to
praise
about
Duprez's performances.
In the Revue et
Gazette
musicale de
Paris,
for
example,
the tenor's virtues were described as follows:
'A voice that is
perfectly pure,
even, sonorous;
pronunciation
that is
excellent,
declamation that is
extraordinary;
these are the
qualities
that first strike one in the
new
singer'.4
While
some critics
present
at the debut mentioned chest
voice,
there
was
controversy
in
subsequent
months about the basic facts: whether
Duprez
was
Anthony
Tommasini,
'Searching
the
Wings
for the Fourth
Tenor',
The New York
Times,
16
February
2003.
-
See
Henry
Pleasants,
The Great Tenor
Tragedy:
The Last
Days of Adolphe
Nourrit as Told
(Mostly)
by Himself (Portland,
OR,
1995).
Pleasants draws
extensively
on the three-volume
biography
by
Louis
Quicherat, Adolphe
Nourrit: sa
vie,
son
talent,
son
caract?re,
sa
correspondance (Paris, 1867).
4
'Une voix
parfaitement pure, ?gale,
sonore;
une
prononciation
excellente,
une d?clamation
extraordinaire,
telles sont les
qualit?s qui frappent
tout d'abord dans l'artiste
nouveau';
Edouard
Monnais,
'D?but du
Duprez
dans Guillaume
Tel!',
Revue et
Galette
musicale de
Paris,
19
April
1837. This
long
review of
Duprez's
debut never mentions chest notes and
only
mentions vocal
register
in
passing, noting
that
Duprez suppressed
a few 'notes de t?tes' in
the Act II trio.
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The
pathological
voice of Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
13
in fact
using
chest
voice;
how
often;
and how
high
he reached.5 Not
only
that,
but
the
special
colour of the tenor's
high
notes was often described as a
special
theatrical
'effect'
('effet'):
that
is,
inextricably
linked to the dramatic situation it was meant to
express.
This was
how
Duprez
himself accounted for the ut de
poitrine
in his
(often
unreliable)
memoirs written
forty years
after the fact. The tenor wrote that he was
so carried
away by
'the
manly
accents,
the sublime cries'
('ces
m?les
accents,
ces cris
sublimes')
of Arnold's Act IV aria that the ut de
poitrine simply happened,
without
any
conscious effort.6 The link between chest notes and
heightened
emotion or
drama was also made in the most notorious account of
Duprez's
career,
Berlioz's
satire 'How a tenor revolves around the
public'
from his
Evenings
with the Orchestra:
The audience has admired the fusion of
feeling
and of
discipline
with an
organ
of
enchanting
sweetness;
there remain to be heard the dramatic
accents,
the bursts of
passion.
A number comes
during
which the
daring
artist,
in chest
voice,
stressing
each
syllable, gives
out
some
high
notes with a resonant
fullness,
an
expression
of
heart-rending grief,
and a
beauty
of tone that so far
nothing
had led one to
expect.7
There are other reasons to doubt the
myth
of the
revolutionary Duprez. John
Rosselli cites several tenors before him who
were
said to have
sung high
notes 'in
full voice' and 'from the chest'.8 He
quotes
a letter from 1814 in which the author
claims that the tenor Giovanni David
had,
after
an
illness,
strengthened
his voice
and 'will have still
more success because he has almost
completely forgotten
his
head notes
[falsetti]'.9
Related
language
can be found in the
eighteenth century;
a
passage by Johann Joachim
Quantz
in F. W.
Marpurg's
Historisch-Kritische
Beytr?ge
of
1754 claims that the tenor Giovanni Paita would not have had
a
beautiful voice had
he not learned to
'unify'
his chest and head tones.10 The ut de
poitrine,
then,
rather
than
representing
a d?finitive break with the
past,
was
perhaps only
one of
Duprez's
skills,
a
special
effect reserved for
special
moments,
and a
phenomenon
with
The consensus in
April
1837 was that
Duprez's
chest voice extended
only
to
h'\
the
phrase
ut de
poitrine only
became
commonplace during
the
subsequent year.
For a
comprehensive
inventory
and
analysis
of critical
responses
to
Duprez's
debut as well as a fuller discussion
of the
place
of science in the
understanding
of
singing
in the nineteenth
century,
see
my
forthcoming
dissertation, 'Early
Vocal
Physiology
and the Creation of the Modern
Operatic
Voice'
(University
of
California, Berkeley).
Gilbert-Louis
Duprez,
Souvenirs d'un chanteur
(Paris, 1880),
75?6.
Hector
Berlioz,
Les Soir?es de F orchestre
(1852, rpt. Paris, 1968),
93
(emphasis
in
original);
translation
adapted
from
Evenings
with the
Orchestra,
trans.
Jacques
Barzun
(New York, 1956),
65?6. This well-known
chapter
never refers to
Duprez by
name,
but the
target
of the satire
is
thinly
veiled;
it continues to
trace,
with
withering
sarcasm,
Duprez's
hubris and fall from
grace.
This is
particularly stinging coming
from
Berlioz,
who was a voice in the choir of
unqualified praise
on
Duprez's
debut. See Berlioz's review in the
Journal
des
D?bats,
19
April
1837,
and his 'D?but de
Duprez
dans Les
Huguenots',
Revue et
Gazette
musicale de
Paris,
21
May
1837.
John
Rosselli,
Singers of
Italian
Opera:
The
History of
a
Profession (Cambridge, 1992),
175?6.
9
Rosselli,
177.
Johann Joachim Quantz, 'Lebensl?uffe',
in Historisch-Kritisch
Beytr?ge ^ur Aufnahme
der
Musik,
ed. F. W.
Marpurg (1754, rpt.
Hildesheim and New
York, 1970), I,
231-2.
My
thanks to
John
Roberts for this reference.
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14
Gregory
W. Bloch
precedents
in earlier decades.
Indeed,
we
may
conclude with Marco
Beghelli
that
'there was no
substantial technical innovation in 1837'.11
And
yet Diday
and
P?trequin,
in the
Gazette
m?dicale of
1840,
do announce the
arrival of
a
'new
species'.
In the first sentence of the
M?moire,
they
claim that
Duprez's
voice is
nothing
less than
revolutionary,
and in two realms:
The art of music has
recently
been enriched
by
a new
species
of
voice,
the
discovery
of
which introduces a new element into the
problem
of
phonation,
and which seems to
demand
a fundamental revolution in the execution and
teaching
of
singing.
[L'art
musical s'est r?cemment enrichi d'une nouvelle
esp?ce
de voix dont la d?couverte
introduit
un
?l?ment nouveau dans le
probl?me
de la
phonation,
et semble devoir
op?rer,
dans l'ex?cution et
l'enseignement
du
chant,
une r?volution fondamentale.
(305)]
A distinction is made between 'the
problem
of
phonation'
and 'the execution of
singing'.
From the
outset,
the M?moire is directed at two
audiences,
has two stories
to
tell,
and reaches two
conclusions,
one scientific and one musical. On the one
hand,
scientists
working
towards an account of the function of the human vocal
mechanism had
by
the 1830s reached a tentative consensus on the central
questions
to be addressed
?
'the
problem
of
phonation'
?
even if the answers remained
uncertain. The article
suggests
that
Duprez
constitutes a
major disruption, reframing
old debates and
posing
new
questions.
On the other
hand,
singers
and
singing
teachers
are confronted with
very practical questions
about the new
technique,
when it should be
employed
and how it should be
taught.
Diday's
and
P?trequin's
essay goes
on to confirm what is
suggested by
more
traditional
musicological
sources. The new
voice,
for
example,
is not identified
as a
personal idiosyncrasy
or innovation on the
part
of
Duprez;
the doctors
only
credit
him with
'importing'
the
technique
from
Italy.
However,
the
interpretation
of these
facts differs from the
interpretations
offered
by
music criticism. Within
Diday's
and
P?trequin's
framework,
that of vocal
physiology, Duprez
is still
revolutionary.
I do
not mean
by
this that the
myth
of
Duprez
comes down to us from the doctors
themselves: their
essay
was not
widely
disseminated and their work was
rarely
cited
by
later
scientists,
let alone in musical discourse.
However,
the M?moire
prefigures
the
myth
in
ways
that other sources do
not,
suggesting
that the
way
we understand
singing
and the
history
of
singing might
have as much to do with
nineteenth-century
science and medicine
as with
nineteenth-century
music criticism.
The
species
that
Diday
and
P?trequin attempt
to
formulate,
the
object
of
study
they reify,
is
not, however,
the
fort
t?nor or tenore
difor^a.
The new
species Duprez
represents
lies outside the
system
of vocal
registers,
of head and
chest,
altogether.
The
phrase
'ut de
poitrine'
never
appears
in the
essay. Rather,
the authors call what
Duprez produced
the voix sombree. The voice is
'darkened',
Diday
and
P?trequin
claim,
by
a
lowering
of the
larynx,
visible as a forward-tilted head and a
lowered
Adam's
apple. They
describe
repeatedly
and at
length
the difference between this
'darkened voice' and the
'ordinary,
older
style',
which
they
call voix blanche:
11
Marco
Beghelli,
TI "do di
petto":
Dissacrazione di un
mito',
Il
saggiatore
musicale,
3
(1996),
105-49,
here 140.
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The
pathological
voice of Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
15
The
darkening gives
the
singing
more
energy,
but it takes
away
much of its
agility;
the voix
blanche has less
force,
but it
gains
the
advantage
whenever
vivacity
becomes
indispensable.
The first has a
slow,
solemn
quality;
the second has
more
facility
in its
manner,
more
delicacy
in its forms. The sound of one is
full,
but
veiled;
the other is
ringing
but a little thin.
One
transports
and dominates with its
power;
the other seduces and
captivates
with its
flexibility.
[Le
sombrer
imprime
au chant
plus d'?nergie,
mais il lui ?te
beaucoup
de son
agilit?;
la voix
blanche a moins de
force,
mais elle
reprend l'avantage
d?s
que
la vivacit? devient
indispensable.
Le
premier
a
quelque
chose de lent et de
plus
solennel;
la seconde offre
plus
de facilit? dans sa
mode,
plus
de la d?licatesse dans ses formes. Le son dans celui-l? est
plein,
mais
voil?;
dans celle-ci il est
?clatant,
mais un
peu maigre.
L'un
transporte
et ma?trise
par
sa
puissance;
l'autre s?duit et
captive par
sa flexibilit?.
(313)]
To a
modem reader some of this
language
will seem
surprising.
The
opposition
between
strength
and
agility
is familiar
enough,
but the doctors'
opposition
between
the 'veiled' new voices and the
'ringing'
or
'brilliant' old ones is
unexpected.
Eclat
is,
in
fact,
a
key
term with
respect
to voix blanche
throughout
the
M?moire,
while the
adjective
voil?e recurs
several times with
respect
to the new tenors. And while voil?e
bears
a
resemblance to the modern vocal term
'covered',
it fits
uneasily
with all the
talk of these new
voices' force and heroism.
Similarly,
with stories of
Duprez's triumph ringing
in our
ears,
it is
surprising
to
read
that,
according
to
Diday
and
P?trequin,
'those who heard the darkened
singing
for the first time were unanimous in
saying
that it was a
type
of voice that was
forced, false,
artificial'
('Les personnes qui
entendirent
pour
la
premi?re
fois le chant
sombr? furent-elles unanimes ? dire
que
c'?tait un
genre
de voix
forc?, factice,
artificiel'
[311]).
The voix sombree
is,
in a
word,
pathological.
This
judgement
has two
meanings
for the M?moire's two audiences. For
scientists,
the
pathological
status of
voix sombree is
a matter of observed fact: it is the result of
an
imbalance in the normal
equilibrium
of the forces of
phonation
as
they
were conceived of at the time. The
larynx
is
lowered,
airflow is
increased, energy expended
is
magnified
?
the
picture
of voix sombree
painted
in the M?moire bears the distinctive marks of what
Georges
Canguilhem
has identified as the new
conception
of
pathology
in the
early
nineteenth
century,
'the
quantitative
modification of the normal'.12 For the
essay's
musical
readership,
the voix sombree is
pathological
in a more vernacular sense: a
practice
deleterious to art and
dangerous
for
singers
which,
though
it serves a
particular purpose,
must be
contained,
managed, kept
under control. The M?moire
ends with the
ringing
conclusion
that,
for
rigorous physiological
reasons,
the
practice
of voix sombree was destined to die
out,
and soon.
After
looking briefly
at where such ideas would lead later in the
century (and
into
our own
time),
this article will
explore
the debates in vocal
physiology
in the
decades
leading up
to
1840,
explain
how an
apparent
resolution to these debates
was
found,
and consider how
Diday's
and
P?trequin's
essay
?
and
Duprez's
Georges Canguilhem,
The Normal and the
Pathological,
trans.
Carolyn
R. Fawcett and Robert S.
Cohen
(New York,
1989).
Part 1 of the
book,
first written in
1943,
is entitled 'Is the
pathological
state
merely
a
quantitative
modification of the normal state?'.
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16
Gregory
W. Bloch
voice
?
threw this resolution into doubt. The
focus,
in other
words,
will be less on
actual
singing
and on what the sources tell us about
singing
than on
Duprez's
supposed
revolution in the context of
early nineteenth-century
science.
Only
when
we
understand the
origins
and transformations of the sometimes
seemingly
hermetic discourse of medical science can we
begin
to
appreciate
the
implications
of a moment when this discourse came
dramatically
into contact with real
singers.
Only
then, too,
can we
appreciate
the
increasing
relevance of scientific
language
and
ideas to the
popular understanding
of tenors and
operatic singing
in the second half
of the nineteenth
century.
The
future,
or the
opening
of the throat
In one sense
Diday
and
P?trequin
were
right
when
they predicted
that the voix
sombree would become extinct:
by
the late 1840s
Duprez's
voice was all but
destroyed.13
More
generally,
however,
they
were
very wrong.
Not
only
did voix
sombree
survive;
over the next 100
years
it took over
operatic singing.
Consider the
following quotations.
In
1834,
three
years
before
Duprez's
arrival in Paris and six
years
before the
M?moire,
a
doctor
specialising
in vocal
production began
a work
on the
subject
with the
following
declaration:
Up
until now scientists
specialising
in the vocal
organ,
if
they
have not been able to
agree
on the
quality
of the
instrument,
have at least
agreed
on the mechanism for
emitting high
and low tones.
They
have
consequently
said that when one
sings,
the
larynx
raises itself
up
and narrows itself for
high
notes,
and that the
opposite happens during
the emission of low
notes.14
Compare
this to a
directive to
singers published
in 1900:
The
singer
would do well to
constantly
think about the
larynx,
to watch
it,
to feel that it is
well down below the mouth before
commencing
the first note of a
song.
. . .
Then the
larynx
must never be allowed to rise above the fixed
point.
It
may
be
deepened,
and must
be,
for
high
notes,
but it must never ascend.15
The one
thing
scientists were able to
agree
on in the 1830s
?
that the
larynx
could
(and should)
be observed to ascend
during high
notes
-
was,
seventy years later,
completely
overturned.
Indeed,
in
pedagogical publications
in the
years
around
13
There
was,
for
example,
never
any question
of him
being capable
of
singing
in the creation
of
Meyerbeer's
Le
Proph?te
in 1849. See Alan
Armstrong,
'Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
and
Gustave
Roger
in the
Composition
of
Meyerbeer's
Le
Proph?te',
this
journal,
8
(1996),
147-65.
Francesco
Bennati,
'M?moire sur un cas
particulier
d'anomalie de la voix humaine
pendant
le
chant',
read at the Acad?mie
Royale
des
Sciences,
30
September
1833;
also
published
in
an
offprint
edition
(Paris, 1834).
The
subject
of this m?moire is the Russian-born
tenore-contraltino of the
Th??tre-Italien,
Nicolai
Ivanoff,
who
could,
in a sort of
parlour
trick,
produce extremely
low notes.
1:5
Frederick
James
Crowest,
Advice to
Singers (7th
edn, 1900), quoted
in Brent
Jefferey
Monahan,
The Art
of Singing:
A
Compendium of Thoughts
on
Singing
Published between 1777 and
1927
(Metuchen, NJ,
and
London, 1978),
91.
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The
pathological
voice of Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
17
1900,
the lowered
larynx
became a central
concept.16
In much
pedagogy today,
the
lowered
larynx
retains this
supremacy,
though
under a different
name,
'the
open
throat'.
Roger
Freitas has
recently
connected the two
concepts, observing
that
early
nineteenth-century
instructions to raise the
larynx
and constrict the throat at certain
moments seem
incomprehensible
to
singers today,
for whom the
open
throat forms
the foundation of their
training.17 Contemporary
writers who
habitually
invoke
eighteenth-
and
nineteenth-century
treatises,
like
James
Stark and Richard
Miller,
are
forced either to
ignore
or
implausibly explain
away
the contradictions.18
The future direction of
developments
in vocal
physiology
and
singing
itself is
hinted at in the reaction to
Diday's
and
P?trequin's
M?moire
by
the
person
in the
world
perhaps
best
placed
to understand its musical and scientific
implications,
Manuel Garcia
Jr.
The
son
of one of the most
important
tenors of the
early
nineteenth
century
?
Manuel Garcia
Sr.,
who created Almaviva in // barbiere di
Siviglia,
among
other roles
-
and the brother of Maria Malibran and Pauline
Viardot,
by
the
time of his death Garcia
fils
had become famous as the
founding
father of modern
vocal
physiology, laryngoscopy
and modern vocal
pedagogy.
His
prestige
was such
that in 1911 a voice teacher could
give
a
speech purporting
to show 'the
complete
ignorance
that existed
regarding
the
physiology
and action of the vocal
apparatus
prior
to Garcia's invention of the
laryngoscope'.19
In
1840, however,
Garcia had
only just begun
his
teaching
career,
and it would be another fifteen
years
before the
publication,
in London and in
English,
of the
laryngoscopic
article that would
establish some of the
key
terms and methods of voice science still current
today.20
Garcia's
response
to
Diday
and
P?trequin,
which was recorded in letters
published
in the
Gazette
m?dicale and the minutes of the Acad?mie des
Sciences,
was
hostile,
the result of a
number of
personal
and
professional
concerns. At its most
trivial,
this was a
disciplinary turf-squabble:
Garcia claimed that the doctors were
not
sufficiently
familiar with actual
singers; Diday
and
P?trequin replied
that the
teacher was not able to
'systematise'
his observations.
However,
there was a
substantive element as
well,
as when Garcia claimed his
protest
was meant to 'insist
on
my
rights
and establish that the voix sombree
[is]
not "a new
species of singing
voice",
John
Potter's recent account of the creation of the modern
operatic
voice focuses almost
exclusively
on the
gradual supremacy
of the low
larynx.
See
John
Potter,
Vocal
Authority:
Singing Style
and
Ideology (Cambridge, 1998).
Roger
Freitas,
'Towards a Verdian Ideal of
Singing: Emancipation
from Modern
Orthodoxy'', Journal of'the Royal
Musical
Association,
127
(2002),
226-57. Freitas
suggests
that
traces of the
high (or mobile) larynx
mode can be heard in the earliest
recordings,
for
example
those of Adelina
Patti,
indicating
that the shift that
began
with
Duprez
was
long
and
gradual.
18
Freitas,
232-4. See
James
Stark,
Bel Canto: A
History
of
Vocal
Pedagogy (Buffalo,
NY, 1999)
and Richard
Miller,
The Structure
of Singing (New York, 1986)
and
Training
Tenor Voices
(New
York,
1993), among
his
many
other
publications.
19
Herman
Klein,
'Manuel Garcia and the
"coup
de la
glotte"
',
Zeitschrift
der Internationalen
Musikgesellschaft,
13
(1912),
146
(a summary
of a
speech given
in London in December
1911).
Klein is
admittedly
not an unbiased source: a
student of
Garcia,
he was a
key figure
in the creation of 'the Garcia
legacy'.
~y
Manuel
Garcia,
'Observations on the Human
Voice',
Proceedings of
the
Royal Society of
London,
7
(1855),
399-410.
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18
Gregory
W. Bloch
but rather a
fundamental
timbre,
necessarily employed
in both
registers'.21
As he first
articulated in a
paper
submitted to the
Acad?mie,
Garcia divides
singing
into
registers
and
timbres,
the former
originating
in the
glottis,
the latter in the
space
above the
glottis (and
thus in
part dependent
on the
perceived height
of the
larynx).
Thus one
aspect
of the
story
of
singing
in the nineteenth
century
is that of a
conceptual
shift from
Diday's
and
P?trequin's
voix sombree to Garcia's timbre sombre
?from an unnatural r?volution
fondamentale
to a
fully
normalised timbre
fondamental?2
This
change
is
profoundly
related to another shift: the
gradual pathologisation
of
falsetto. Whatever
Duprez's
actual
achievement,
he became the
origin-point
of
a
discourse that
gradually
denied,
in
theory
at
least, any
role for a
practice
called
'falsetto'.
Diday's
and
P?trequin's
M?moire would
seem
irrelevant to this narrative
since it
so
strikingly
avoids
any
discussion of vocal
register,
of chest and head. The
concept
of
register
is, however,
central to the M?moire
precisely
because of its
absence. In their first
paragraph
the doctors write: 'Like the varieties
[of singing]
known
by
the names voix de
poitrine
and voix de
fausset,
the one we are
going
to
give
an account of has a distinct
mechanism,
special
limits,
a
particular
timbre'
(cDe
m?me
que
les vari?t?s connues sous le nom
de voix de
poitrine
et de
fausset,
celle
dont nous allons faire l'histoire a un m?canisme
distinct,
des limites
sp?ciales,
un
timbre
particulier' [305]).
The new
singing,
that
is,
is at once
independent
of
register
and of
a
similar status to falsetto and chest voice. For this
reason,
the same authors'
'M?moire sur le m?canisme de la voix de
fausset',
published
four
years
later in the
same
periodical,
serves as a
companion-piece
to the earlier M?moire.23
Perhaps surprisingly given
the extensive literature
on
falsetto that
already
existed
by
the
1840s,
Diday's
and
P?trequin's
later
essay
is less
interesting
than the earlier
piece.
In
part,
this is because their basic conclusion
-
that
during
falsetto the
lips
of
the
glottis
do not vibrate
?
is
flawed,
and because
they
reach this conclusion
using
reasoning
that is not
nearly
so
rigorous
as it claims to be.
However,
it is also because
the article on falsetto lacks the most unusual and
compelling
element of the earlier
piece:
the
pretence
of
experimentalism,
the
uncanny way
the authors use
Duprez
to
draw conclusions about
parameters
of vocal
physiology
that were then
open
to
question.
Indeed,
if
Diday
and
P?trequin
had wanted to
design
a machine to test
prevailing hypotheses
of vocal
production, they
would have built
Duprez.
For this
'Maintenir mes droits et d'?tablir
que
la voix sombree
n'[est] pas
''une nouvelle
esp?ce
de voix
chant?e",
mais un timbre
fondamental,
n?cessairement
employ?
dans les deux
registres';
Garcia,
in
Comptes-rendus
hebdomadaires des s?ances de lAcad?mie des
Sciences,
hereafter
Comptes-rendus,
12
(19 April 1841),
692-3.
22
Garcia,
'M?moire
sur la voix
humaine',
first
presented
to the Acad?mie des Sciences on
16 November 1840 and
published
in truncated form in the medical
newspaper UEsculape:
Gazette
des
m?decinspracticiens,
9 and 23
May
1841. An
expanded
text
appeared
as a
preface
to
the first volume of Garcia's Trait?
complet
de Fart du chant
(Paris, 1840) along
with a
summary
and evaluation
by
the Acad?mie written
by Joachim
Henri Dutrochet and
signed by
Claude
Savary
and
Fran?ois Magendie
-
the latter will
appear
later in this article. See the facsimile
of the 1847 edition of the Trait?
complet (Geneva, 1986)
and A
Complete
Treatise on the Art
of
Singing,
trans. Donald V.
Paschke,
2 vols.
(New
York,
1975 and
1984).
23
Diday
and
P?trequin,
'M?moire sur le m?canisme de la voix de
fausset', Galette
m?dicale de
Paris,
12
(24 February
and 2 March
1844),
115-20,
133-9. The
paper
had been
presented
to the Acad?mie de M?decine a
year earlier,
in March 1843.
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The
pathological
voice of Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
19
reason,
while the 'M?moire sur une
nouvelle
esp?ce
de voix chant?e'
(and
Garcia's
reaction to
it) points
towards future
developments
in
singing
and its
understanding,
it also
points
back,
responding directly
to
developments
in the
preceding
decades.
The
past,
or the
flute/violin
question
There was
something
of
an
explosion
in
publications
about the vocal mechanism
around 1840.
Inspired by
the
application
of new
experimental
methods to voice
production by Fran?ois Magendie, rapid developments
in the
understanding
of the
underlying functioning
of muscle and
nerve,
and
high-profile challenges
to
conventional wisdom
by
F?lix Savart and Pierre
Malgaigne, publications
on the
voice
proliferated
after 1830. This
phase
of research reached
a
culminating point
in
1843 when the Acad?mie des Sciences ran two
competitions,
one for the best work
'relating
to the mechanism of the
production
of the human
voice',
the other for the
best work
'relating
to the
comparative
structure of the vocal
organs'.24
While writers varied in their
perspectives
and
emphases,
the basic structure of the
different
arguments
was
remarkably
consistent.
Again
and
again
the central
question
was: 'What musical instrument does the voice most resemble?' The
simplicity
of the
question
belied how much was at
stake,
since
deciding
on an
analogue
meant
deciding,
first,
how and where the sound
originates,
then how
changes
in
pitch
are
effected,
and
finally
what role
particular
anatomical structures
play.
As
early
as the
beginning
of the
eighteenth century answering
the
question
came down to a choice
between
a
wind
or a
string
instrument. In other words: was the
larynx
like the
mouthpiece
of a
flute,
initiating
but not
fully participating
in the
production
of
sounds,
or was it like the violin
string, creating
different
pitches through
internal
changes?
Claude
Dodart,
who
published
a series of
essays
around
1700,
was
regularly
summoned
as an
authority
for the first
theory.
He was echoed in the
nineteenth
century by
Savart
among others,
whose exclusive focus on the static
structure of the
larynx
can
be
appreciated by examining
the
engravings
that
accompany
his 1825 article
(Fig. I).25
In this series of
images,
Savart
begins
with
an
idealised whistle and
changes
one element at a
time until he has built
up
an
image
of the
larynx
?
one
with
no more
'moving parts'
than the whistle he started with.
According
to this
theory
of
glottal
function,
the structures above the
larynx
?
the
pharynx,
the soft
palate,
and the oral and nasal
cavities,
collectively
known in the
twentieth
century
as 'the vocal tract'
?
control
pitch
like the
keys
of the flute or
the slide of the trombone. For this
reason,
the observation that the
larynx
rose
during high
notes became a
key piece
of evidence in
determining
the function of the
vocal mechanism
generally.
In the
early
nineteenth
century,
Dodart is
always presented
as the
antagonist
of
Antoine
Ferrein,
whose work was
published
in 1741. Ferrein's
coinage
of the term
'vocal cords'
('cordes vocales')
reflects his
conception
of
laryngeal
function
as
24
For the results of the
competitions,
see
Comptes-rendus,
20
(10
March
1845),
603-7.
25
F?lix
Savart,
'M?moire sur la voix
humaine'',
Journal
de
physiologie exp?rimentale
et
pathologique,
5
(1825),
367?93. The
essay
was
published
almost
simultaneously
in Annales de chimie et de
physique,
ser.
2,
vol. 30
(1825),
64-87.
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20
Gregory
W. Bloch
Fig.
1:
Engraving accompanying
F?lix
Savart,
'M?moire sur la voix humaine'
(1825).
crucially dependent
on the modification of the
lips
of the
glottis
themselves. He
famously
defended his
theory by
a
demonstration in front of the Acad?mie
using
a
cadaver's head attached to a
bellows
-
in his
words,
he 'made the dead
speak'.26
In
the nineteenth
century
the demonstration
was
repeated by, among others,
Johann
Joachim
M?ller
(see Fig. 2).27
By
1830 the
flute/violin
question
had become
so dominant that it was almost
conventional in new
publications
to include a disclaimer such as: 'We will not
recount here the
long disputes
that have troubled anatomists on the nature of the
26
Quoted
in Marc-Antoine Colombat de
l'Is?re,
Trait? des maladies et de
l'hygi?ne
des
organes
de la
voix,
2nd edn
(Paris, 1838),
33-4;
in
English
A Treatise on the Diseases and
Hygiene of
the
Organs of
the
Voice,
trans.
J.
F. W. Lane
(Boston, 1845),
16.
27
See
Johann Joachim
M?ller,
Physiologie
du
syst?me
nerveux,
ou Recherches et
exp?riences
sur les
diverses classes
d'appareils
nerveux,
les
movements,
la
voix,
la
parole,
les sens et les
facult?s
intellectuelles,
trans. A.
J.
L.
Jourdan,
2 vols.
(Paris, 1840).
Unlike most German work on the
voice,
this
volume was
extensively
cited in
subsequent
French
scholarship.
It does not
correspond
to
any
one work that
M?ller,
a
professor
in
Berlin,
published
in
German,
containing excerpts
from his massive Handbuch der
Physiologie
des Menschen
f?r Vorlesungen (Koblenz, 1833?8)
and
a more recent
work,
?ber die
Compensation
der
physischen Kr?fte
am menschlichen
Stimmorgan
(Berlin, 1839).
It is from the latter that all the
engravings
in the French
edition,
including
Figure
2,
were taken.
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The
pathological
voice of Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
21
Fig.
2:
Engraving accompanying Johann Joachim M?ller,
Physiologie
du
syst?me
nerveux
(1840).
vocal
organ,
nor
the various
comparisons they
have
drawn,
now with
string
instruments,
now
with wind instruments'.28
By
the turn of nineteenth
century,
some
authors,
like Anthelme
Richerand,
were
concluding
that,
'rejecting
the
opposing
and
too
mutually
exclusive conclusions of Dodart and
Ferrein,
we
. . .
see in the
larynx
an
instrument
combining
the
advantages
and the double mechanism of wind and
string
instruments'.29 It was not at all
clear, however,
even to commentators at the
time,
what the term 'double mechanism'
actually
meant.
Georges
Cuvier,
Proc?s-verbaux des s?ances de F Acad?mie des
Sciences,
hereafter
Proc?s-verbaux,
9
(10 May 1830),
441.
Anthelme
Richerand,
Nouveaux Elemens de
physiologie (5th edn, Paris,
1811), II, 347;
in
English
Elements
of Physiology,
trans. G.
J.
M. de
Lys (Philadelphia, 1825),
372.
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22
Gregory
W. Bloch
There were more
imaginative
ways
out of the dilemma. As Ferrein was the first
to
point
out,
the oboe sits somewhere between the two
options:
it has
a
vibrating
body,
the
reed,
but the
body
itself is not so
dramatically
altered as a
violin
string
when
changing pitch
and the mechanism of
pitch change
seems to be closer to the
flute.
However,
the
analogy
raised more
questions
than it answered. The anatomist
Etienne
Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire,
for
example,
admitted that the relative
importance
of sound
source
and
resonance were as
poorly
understood in the oboe as
they
were
in the human
voice,
rendering
the
analogy
of limited use.30
Again,
it was the visible
raising
and
lowering
of the
larynx
that allowed this to be an issue at all.
Another
piece
of evidence that could
convincingly swing
the debate was
knowing
if the
lips
of the
glottis
came into contact
during
the
production
of
sound;
if
they
were observed to do
so,
then one could conclude that
they
were
vibrating
like a
string.
As
Figure
1
suggests,
Savart believed that
they
did not come into contact
?
note how far
apart
the vocal folds are in his final
image.
Another writer in the flute
camp,
Marc-Antoine Colombat de
l'Is?re,
stated
bluntly
that when the
lips
of the
glottis
'are
applied against
each other
. . .
they
close the trachea so
hermetically
that
not a
particle
of air can
escape
from the
lungs, notwithstanding
all the efforts of the
respiratory
muscles'.31
These and other authors were
wrong, however,
and it would take the most
respected proponent
of
experimental physiology
of the
early
decades of the
nineteenth
century, Fran?ois Magendie,
to
explain why.
In his Pr?cis ?l?mentaire de
physiologie
he writes:
Many distinguished
authors have endeavored to
explain [the
different sounds of the
voice],
but these
[writings],
when
examined,
will be found to be rather
comparisons
than
explanations.
. . .
All the
[previous] explanations
err
radically
in
this,
that
they
are founded
upon
a consideration of this
organ
in the dead
body,
while the
only
true mode of
investigating
the
subject
is a minute attention to the
anatomy
of the
part,
and
a careful
examination of the
organ
exhibited
during
life. I have endeavored to
supply
this
deficiency,
and will now state the results I have obtained.32
'Careful examination of the
organ during
life' would become easier after Manuel
Garcia's construction of the
laryngoscope
in the 1850s.
Lacking
this
tool,
Magendie
turned to the method used in much of his work: the vivisection of
dogs.
His most
important investigation
can
only barely
be called
an
'experiment':
he cut
open
a
dog's
throat above the
thyroid cartilage, avoiding severing
blood
vessels,
and
Etienne
Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire,
Philosophie anatomique (Paris,
1818;
facs. edn
Brussels, 1968),
I,
304-47.
Colombat, Trait?, 61, Treatise,
39.
Fran?ois Magendie,
Pr?cis ?l?mentaire de
physiologie (Paris, 1816),
214?15.
Subsequent
editions
appeared
in
1825, 1833,
1836 and
1838,
though
the
chapter
on the voice was revised and
expanded only
once,
in 1833. In
English
An
Elementary
Treatise on Human
Physiology,
trans.
John
Revere
(New
York, 1844),
202;
a
partial
facsimile of this translation is included in
Significant
Contributions to the
History of Psychology
1750?1920,
ed. Daniel N. Robinson
(Washington,
DC,
1978),
series
E,
vol. IV.
Page
references
are to these
English
editions. I
cite
nineteenth-century
translations where
they
are
available,
even when
they depart
from a
literal
rendering
of the
French;
diction and
spelling
have
occasionally
been modernised.
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The
pathological
voice of Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
23
observed the
glottis
while the
dog
continued to howl.33
Magendie's
conclusion was
unambiguous
and unassailable: unless the
lips
of the
glottis
were in
contact,
no
sound
was
produced. Magendie reported
that he observed the
glottal
folds
vibrating
along
their entire
length during
low sounds while
a
smaller and smaller
portion
of
the folds vibrated
as the
pitch
ascended.
At this
point
the whole
flute/violin
question
seemed,
to
Magendie
at
least,
closed:
he
argued
that all
pitch
modification could be located within the
larynx.
However,
Magendie's privileging
of evidence
acquired during
vivisection led him
astray
when
attempting
to
explain
the raised and lowered
larynx.
While
a
dog's glottis
can be
observed
during
vivisection,
the action of the vocal tract
cannot,
and
Magendie
was
so intent on
doing
away
with the flute model that he
overcompensated, denying
a
substantial
place
for the vocal tract in his account. The vocal
'tube',
he
argued,
can
'arrange
itself so as to harmonise with the
larynx,
and thus favour the
production
of
all the numerous notes of which the voice is
susceptible' (204, emphasis added).
When
speaking
about the
height
of the
larynx,
he likewise
painted
a
very
passive
picture
of vocal tract function: 'The
larynx
elevates itself
during
the
production
of
high
sounds,
and is
depressed
when
they
are
low;
of
consequence,
the vocal tube is
shortened in the first
case,
and
elongated
in the second. We
may
conceive that
a
short tube is most favorable to the transmission of
high
sounds,
and that a
long
one
is most
advantageous
in those that are low'
(204).
In the end
Magendie
admitted
that the whole
subject
was one of
obscurity.
After
all,
while
an
oboe's tube
changes
only
in
length,
the vocal tube
changes
in
size,
shape
and
rigidity.
If science did not
have
an
adequate explanation
for the
simpler
case of the
oboe,
it was
helpless
to
account for the
exponentially
more
complicated
case of the voice. 'Until natural
philosophy
has determined with
precision
the influence of the tube in reed
instruments',
he
concluded,
'we
can,
at
best,
only
form
probable conjectures
respecting
the influence of the tube in the formation of the voice'
(204).
The admission recalls
an earlier
point
in
Magendie's chapter,
in a
section entitled
'Timbre of the Voice'. The writer has little to
say
on the
subject:
'We are
ignorant
of the
precise physical
circumstances
upon
which
[timbre] depends' (202).
More
than the
physiological
causes,
it is the acoustical nature of timbre itself 'for which
no
satisfactory
account has
yet
been
given'.
This lacuna in the
understanding
of
timbre would be filled
by
Hermann von Helmholtz in the 1860s. And
a
decade after
Magendie,
both
Diday
and
P?trequin
and Garcia would
come to
realise,
in different
^
Magendie
was
repeating
a
procedure performed by
his teacher Xavier
Bichat,
though
Bichat
did not
interpret
his observations so
ambitiously.
Bichat tells us that the
dogs
involved in
the
experiment
made such a horrible noise that the
cleaning lady
of the
operating
theatre
was
obliged
to move her bedchamber further
away
from where
they
were
kept.
Xavier
Bichat,
Trait? d'anatomie
descriptive,
new edn
(Paris, 1812),
II,
416-17.
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24
Gregory
W. Bloch
ways,
that
controlling
timbre is the role of the vocal tract
-
that
Magendie's
two
big
unsolved
questions
were in fact one and the same.34
The
M?moire,
or
Duprez
as
experiment
So the
question
of the
production
of the voice had
progressed
from
asking
how the
larynx
functioned in isolation to
asking
how the
larynx
interacted with
larger
structures. This
change
in the
object
of
study
was
accompanied by
a
shift in research
methods. As
John
Lesch has
explained,
the trend in the life sciences in France after
1820 was
away
from
systematic
observation and taxonomies towards
laboratory
experiment
and the formulation of
general
laws.35 Such laws were to be formulated
after the model of the
physical
sciences,
whose Newtonian revolution in the
eighteenth century
had left some in the life sciences
feeling
behind the times. The
experimental
ideal,
of which
Fran?ois Magendie
was
perhaps
the most
powerful
advocate,
was not
simply
to observe life
processes,
but also to intervene
actively
in
the
laboratory, controlling
the individual
parameters
of a
given process
and
observing
the results.
Judged according
to this
ideal,
the
descriptive
and
speculative
writing
of authors like Savart would
obviously
be found
wanting,
but even
Magendie's
own
experience
with the vivisected
dog
would be
incomplete
since it
was
capable
of
drawing
conclusions
only
about the
glottal
mechanism in isolation.
The ideal would be a
laboratory experiment
on the human voice in which
changes
in the
glottis accompanied by changes
in the vocal tract could be
systematically
compared
to the voice when the vocal tract remained fixed.
As described
by Diday
and
P?trequin, Duprez provided just
such an
experimental
subject,
his
low,
fixed
larynx serving
to factor out
changes
in the vocal
tract,
allowing
conclusions to be drawn about the vocal mechanism as a
whole.
Using
a
naturally occurring subject
as a
living experiment
in this
way
was an
integral part
of
the
experimentalist project.
In a
monograph
on the nervous
system, Magendie
wrote: 'What we do not dare to do on
man, Nature,
a less
scrupulous experimenter,
takes it
upon
herself to do'.36
Magendie's journal
made this double
project explicit
in its title:
Journalde physiologie exp?rimentale
et
pathologique.
In the
M?moire,
Diday
and
P?trequin
declared a similar
allegiance by way
of an unattributed
(and
as
yet
unidentified) epigraph:
The
experimental
method consists of two
complementary
modes of
investigation:
vivisec
tion and the observation of
living
man
-
induced results and
spontaneous
results. If there
4
Diday
and
P?trequin
and Garcia were not the
only
authors
working
towards such an
account. Francesco
Bennati,
an Italian
?migr? living
in
Paris,
was concerned with the same
questions
in the work he
completed
before his
tragic early
death,
though
his methods and
conclusions were
very
different. For more on his
contribution,
see
my 'Early
Vocal
Physiology'.
35
John
E.
Lesch,
Science and Medicine in France: The
Emergence of Experimental Physiology,
1790-1855
(Cambridge,
MA,
1984).
36
Magendie, Le?ons
sur les
fonctions
et les maladies du
syst?me
nerveux
(Paris, 1839), quoted
in
Lesch,
Science and
Medicine,
166.
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The
pathological
voice of Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
25
are secrets that nature allows one to seize when one forces her to
speak,
there are others
she does not reveal until one knows how to listen to her.
[La
m?thode
exp?rimentale comporte
deux modes
d'investigation, qui
se
compl?tent
l'un
par
l'autre: les vivisections et l'observation sur l'homme
vivant;
effets
provoqu?s,
effets
spontan?s.
S'il est des secrets
que
la nature se laisse arracher
quand
on la force ?
parler,
il
en est d'autres
qu'elle
ne r?v?le
que lorsqu'on
sait l'?couter.
(305)]
While the subtle
joke
of
beginning
an article about
singing
with a
quotation
about
'knowing
how to listen' should not
go unremarked,
the
primary purpose
of the
epigraph
was to
respond pre-emptively
to
why
the article had
appeared
under the
heading 'Physiologie exp?rimentale'
and
why
it was submitted to the Acad?mie des
Sciences for the
prize
in
experimental physiology
when the
investigators' principal
research
activity
seems to have been
nothing
more
(nor less)
than
going
to the
opera.
The M?moire
?
to turn
finally
to a
detailed
reading
of this source
?
is built almost
entirely
on a
single
observation: that the new
singing
was characterised
by
the
low,
fixed
larynx
which was to become the obsession of
singers
later in the
century.
The
rest of the
essay
is
presented
as the rational deduction of the
consequences
of this
fact.
Diday
and
P?trequin begin
with a
physiological
account of the voix sombree.
Assuming
that three factors affect the
pitch
of a
sung
note
-
airflow,
glottal
closure
and
larynx height
?
and
observing
that voix sombree
requires
that the
larynx
remain
fixed,
they
conclude that the
degree
of the other two factors must be
correspond
ingly greater.
This deduction is confirmed
by
both the
greater
volume of voix sombree
(resulting
from the increased
airflow)
and the
fatigue
it causes the
singer (resulting
from the increased muscular tension in the
glottis).
From these
fairly plausible
arguments,
the authors
move on to more
outlandish
assertions,
for
example
that the
role of the
larynx
affects
acting style.
The old
tenor,
needing
to
keep
his neck
straight
to allow the
larynx
to ascend and
descend,
was forced into
stiff,
formal
postures.
The new
tenor,
whose fixed
larynx
allows his neck to move
freely,
can
assume more
dynamic poses.
These conclusions are
confirmed,
either
directly
or
indirectly, by
observations from the
opera
house. As
proof,
the authors consider it
sufficient
simply
to mention the names of
Duprez
?
voix
sombree,
dynamic postures
?
and Louis Ponchard
?
voix
blanche,
formal
postures.37
All of the M?moire's
arguments
follow
an
identical rhetorical
path. Diday
and
P?trequin
first
present seemingly objective
axioms of
anatomy
or
acoustics;
they
then
present
their observations on the voix
sombree-, then,
through logical reasoning,
they
reach some conclusion about
singing generally. Crucially,
each section ends
when this
conclusion,
ostensibly
the result of rational
deduction,
is confirmed
through
observations made in the
opera
house. This is true of even the most
abstract
section,
the 'New
Theory
of Sons
Files',
in which the authors ask how a
singer
manages
to decrescendo while
maintaining
a
steady pitch given
that
changes
While the
argument linking
throats to
postures
is
fanciful, Diday
and
P?trequin may
be
responding
to
something
substantive about the different
acting styles
of Nourrit and
Duprez;
see Maribeth
Clark,
'The
Body
and the Voice in Ta Muette de
Porticf, 19th-century
Music,
27
(2003),
116-31,
especially
127-9.
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26
Gregory
W. Bloch
in airflow
are
known to affect
frequency.
Their
conclusion,
which involves a
hypothetical 'system
of
compensation' linking glottis
and
breath,
was confirmed
Very recently' by
an unnamed 'famous tenor' who
displayed
an
inability
to
decrescendo on
high
notes
(314).
A short third
section,
on
the sound of the voix
sombree,
employs
the same rhetorical
strategy:
one would
predict
that the timbres of
voix sombree and voix blanche would differ
increasingly
as
pitch
increases since the
difference in
larynx position
becomes
correspondingly
more
pronounced.
Sure
enough,
observation in the
opera
house confirms this.
In a final
section,
'On the Musical Use of the Voix Sombree and the Sombrer
Mixte"\
the tone
changes markedly.
The reader is addressed
directly, given
a
list of
instructions on how to
produce
the different
voice-types,
and the new
technique
is
analysed
almost
sociologically
?
teachers are
seducing young singers
into
adopting
the new
method with false
promises
of an extended
upper range
and transformation
from baritone to tenor.
Diday
and
P?trequin propose
an
alternative
method,
which
they
call the sombrer mixte or 'mixed
darkening'.
This
compromise
unites the
qualities
of voix sombree and voix blanche
by
somehow
'combining'
or
'fusing'
their mecha
nisms.
Following
the
path
of
previous
sections,
it is
presented
as a
logical
consequence
of the earlier discussion.
However,
the
descriptions
offered are
vague
and confirmation in the
opera
house is almost non-existent. The tenor Giovanni
Battista Rubini is mentioned as
presenting
a
variety
of
qualities
at
once,
but the
authors
stop
short of
identifying
him as an embodiment of their 'new method'.
In a
startling
turn,
the M?moire concludes with dire
predictions
about the fate of
voix sombree and the
singers
who
use it. The exertion the timbre
requires
is
damaging
not
only
to the voice but to the health of the
singer generally,
and
Diday
and
P?trequin
offer a melodramatic narrative of failure and
collapse.
Since the breath
must be
more forceful to
compensate
for the low
larynx,
the
lungs
are distended
unnaturally.
This
distension,
the authors
write,
gradually
causes 'slowness in the
renewing
of
fluids,
sluggish
blood,
blockage
of the
arteries,
etc. One can
imagine
the
fatigue
that results from this for the
singer' ('retard
de la renouvellement de ce
fluide,
langueur
de
l'h?matose,
obstacles
au cours de
sang,
etc. On
con?oit
toute la
fatigue qui
doit
en r?sulter
pour
le chanteur'
[313]).
This is not the end. Permanent
damage
to the 'venous circulation' and
capillaries
will
follow,
infailliblement
?
leading
to the troubles divers of 'visceral lesions'. The
damage
to the voice is described in an
overwrought present
tense:
first,
a
burning
sensation behind the
sternum,
then
fatigue
and loss of vocal
power; finally,
total vocal
collapse.
Like the reference to
Rubini for sombrer
mixte,
the authors confirm their assertion
using
a famous
opera
star as evidence. Unlike
Rubini, however,
this star is never named:
This conclusion is a
rigorous consequence
of
everything
that has been said about voix
sombr?is mode of
production.
. . .
The voix
sombree,
employed regularly
and without
mixing
will
survive
only for
a limited
period.
This
proposition,
the
validity
of which was
recently
confirmed
by
a
great example,
will,
we venture to
predict,
be confirmed
by
more than one case in the
future.
[Cette
conclusion est une
cons?quence rigoureuse
de tout ce
qui
a ?t? dit sur le mode de
production
de la voix sombree.
. . .
La voix sombree souvent excerc?e et donn?e sans
m?lange
n'a
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The
pathological
voice of Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
27
qu'une
dur?e tr?s limit?e. Cette
proposition
dont un
grand example
n'a
pas
tard? ? d?montrer
la
justesse,
recevra
encore,
nous osons le
pr?dire, plus
d'une confirmation nouvelle.
(313,
emphasis original)]
The
'great example'
can
only
be
Nourrit,
who had committed suicide a little
over a
year
earlier. Nourrit haunts the
essay
in mentions of the
'bizarre',
'exceptional'
and
'absurd'
myths
that swirl around the voix sombree
-
and none was more
bizarre than
that of the
great singer brought
to his death
by
madness and disease.38
The shift in tone and rhetoric in the final section of the M?moire is a
direct result
of the
essay's
two
goals,
the two revolutions it seeks to
address,
the
impartial,
observational
tone of the earlier sections
giving
way
to a more
opinionated,
prescriptive
voice. The dual nature of the M?moire also reflects the different
concerns and
temperaments
of its creators. At the time of his
death,
Diday
was best
known for his work
on
venereal
disease;
his treatise on neo-natal
syphilis
was a
standard in the field.39 Later in
life,
this interest led him into the realm of social
polemic,
as in his 1881
publication
The Venereal Peril within the
Family
or the
fiercely
anti-clerical Medical
Investigation
into the Miracles
of
Lourdes.40
However,
in the words of
a
posthumous
tribute to
Diday,
the
authojc
was also 'a veritable
artist,
a
dilettante
not
only
of
syphilis
. . .
but also of music and fine arts'.41 In
particular,
he had
a
lifelong
love of
opera.
In an
autobiographical
essay
written towards the end of his
life,
he
described his life as an
impoverished
medical student in Paris in
1830, where,
because he
spent
all his
money
on
tickets to the
Th??tre-Italien,
he was reduced to
eating
andouillette.42
P?trequin,
in
contrast,
seems to have had little interest in
opera
or music.
However,
he did share with his friend a
wide-ranging
interest in
belles-lettres,
publishing
essays
on French
poetry
and classical
philology
as well as a massive
translation,
with
commentary,
of the works of
Hippocrates.43
As a
doctor,
his fields
of
specialisation
were diverse: his oeuvre includes
major
works
on
ophthalmology,
audiology
and obstetrics.
Particularly important
is his
ambitious,
systematic study
of human
anatomy
and
physiology,
the massive Trait? d'anatomie
topographique
m?dico-chirurgicale.AA
The
book,
with its
emphasis
on the
importance
of observation
38
A final
paragraph
asks if
singers
should renounce voix sombree. The answer is no:
when used
with moderation and
'mixing',
the voice can still be a
'happy conquest
for art' and the
authors
again point
to Rubini as a model of
healthy singing.
After the
passion
of the
preceding paragraphs,
this
equivocation
seems
unconvincing.
Diday,
Trait? de la
syphilis
des nouveau-n?s et des
enfants
? la mamelle
(Paris, 1854).
40
Diday,
Te P?ril v?n?rien dans les
familles (Paris, 1881)
and Examen m?dical des miracles de Lourdes
(Paris, 1873).
41
A.
Doyon,
Installation du buste du Docteur Paul
Diday, Hospice
de
lAntiquaille,
commemorative
pamphlet (Lyons, 1897), n.p.
42
Diday,
'Les R?cr?ations d'un ?tudiant de
1830',
in
Eloges acad?miques
et miscellan?es
(Lyons,
1894),
298-9.
43
P?trequin,
uvres
po?tiques dEug?ne
Faure
(Paris, 1870-5);
Nouvelles Recherches
historiques
et
critiques
sur P?trone suivies d'?tudes litt?raires et
bibliographiques
sur le
Satyricon (Paris, 1869);
and
Chirurgie d'Hippocrate (Paris, 1877?8).
P?trequin,
Trait? d'anatomie
topographique m?dico-chirurgicale,
consid?r?e
sp?cialement
dans ses
applications
? la
pathologie,
? la medicine
l?gale,
? l'art
obst?trical,
et ? la
chirurgie op?ratoire (1st
edn,
Paris and
Lyons,
1844;
2nd
edn, Paris, 1857).
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28
Gregory
W. Bloch
and
experimentation
of the
living organism,
offers
many
parallels
in method and
style
with the more
dispassionate
sections of the M?moire.
The differences between the two authors result in an
essay
providing
two
perspectives throughout.
On the one
hand,
the M?moire
proceeds
from
a set of
observations,
through
strict
logical arguments,
to conclusions
regarding
the new
singing
and how it came about. This
surely
reflects
P?trequin's
orientation and
addresses the 'revolution' in the life sciences
generally.
Indeed,
when
P?trequin
cites
the M?moire in his Trait?
d'anatomie,
he
only
mentions the
theory
of sons
fil?s,
the
most abstract
passage
of the M?moire and the one that most
closely
conforms to
the ideals of
experimental pathology.
The
overwrought prose
and
predictions
about
the fate of
singers,
on
the other
hand,
reflect
Diday's forays
into social criticism. The
attempt
to
influence
singers,
to
change
the course of
a
musical revolution
already
in
progress,
contrasts
sharply
with the
relatively dry physiological arguments.
Both
perspectives
are
present throughout
the
essay
and for most of its
length
remain
more or less
balanced,
even
reinforcing
each other at
points. Only
in the final
section does
polemic
takes over.
Yet as
entertaining
and
quotable
as all the melodrama
is,
the
dry physiological
voice is in the end more radical.
Diday
and
P?trequin
revive the old
analogy
between
voice and instrument
only
to conclude that it is no
longer possible
to settle
on a
single
answer. The voix blanche is like an
oboe,
the voix sombree
a
trumpet
or horn: the
mobile
larynx changes
the
length
of the
resonating
tube like an
oboist's
fingers;
the throat with fixed
larynx
is like the natural horn with its tube of fixed
length.
The
authors had
begun
with the
assumption
that the
length
of the
larynx
could affect
pitch
and this
hypothesis
was confirmed
by
their observations
on
the voix sombree.
However,
by
the end of the
essay
voix sombree has
challenged
what had been the
fundamental
core of the debate about the vocal tract. Where doctors had
once asked
if the vocal tract affected
pitch, Duprez's singing suggested
that it could but
sometimes didn't
?
and even when it
did,
it did so
according
to a
poorly
understood
nexus of
multiple
factors. A
single pitch
no
longer
had a
single
cause. The timbre
of the voice
was
not,
as earlier writers had
suggested,
a
passive
ornament to a vocal
pitch,
but rather a
fundamentally
related
phenomenon, changing
and
changed by
pitch.
Such conclusions
pointed
to a
larger conceptual challenge:
the voice could
no
longer
be considered
a
single,
well-defined
object, comparable
to the notes
of a
musical instrument. This was an
assumption structuring
the work of
practically
all
previous
writers,
even
Magendie,
who was
beginning
to move
towards
an account in which timbre
played
a more
important
role.
Duprez's
singing
not
only
added
a new
phenomenon
for science to account
for;
it
challenged
the unified status of 'the human voice'
per
se. But this
splitting
of the voice into different
phenomena
with different
causes was a
temporary
state of affairs. There are
good
reasons to think of the voice as a
single
phenomenon.
What
was needed was not more
models,
but one that was more
complex
and
more
powerful.
When
Diday
and
P?trequin published
their
M?moire,
another author was in the
process
of
formulating just
such
a model
?
Manuel Garcia
Jr.
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The
pathological
voice of Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
29
Garcia,
or the
politics
of
pathology
Six months after the M?moire
appeared,
Garcia's 'M?moire
sur la voix humaine'
was
presented
to the Acad?mie des Sciences.45
During
1840 Garcia had been
writing
not
only
his scientific
work,
but also the first volume of a
large practical
treatise
that,
in a similar but much more
ambitious
way
than the
M?moire,
would bind into an
overarching theory
new methods of
physiology
with traditions of voice
pedagogy,
the
language
of scientists with the
language
of
singers
and
musicians,
the old
styles
of
singing
with the new.
When Garcia was made aware of the work of
Diday
and
P?trequin,
he viewed it as a
personal
insult and
professional
threat and sent a letter
of
protest
to the
Gazette
m?dicale
claiming
his
right
of
priority
over
observations
about the
new 'darkened'
singing.46
Garcia's reaction must
partly
have been to the strident final
section,
where
singers
are warned about the new
technique.
A character
implicit
in the narrative is the
singing
teacher who
promises
the
young
tenor acclaim as well as an
extended
upper
range
if he darkens his voice:
It is rare indeed
if, among
the artists to whom one teaches the
darkening technique,
most do not think that
they
will find a
way
of
gaining
several
high
notes and
changing
the
natural
range
of their voice: thus baritones think
they
will succeed in
turning
themselves into
tenors.
. . .
Initiation into this new mode of
singing
has often been a source of
disappointment
for artists.
[Il
est
rare,
en
effet, que, parmi
les artistes ?
qui
on
enseigne
la mani?re de
sombrer,
la
plupart
ne
s'imagine y
trouver le
moyen
de
gagner quelques
notes
aigu?s,
et
de
changer
le
registre
naturel de leur voix: ainsi les
barytons
croient
qu'ils parviendront
? se transformer
en t?nors.
. . .
Souvent l'initiation ? ce nouveau mode de chant ?tait
pour
les artistes une
source de
d?ceptions. (312, 313)]
Even if
Diday
and
P?trequin
were not
thinking
of
Garcia,
the
reception
of the
latter's work at the Acad?mie
suggests
that he was known
specifically
as a teacher
of the darkened timbre.
Garcia
points
to his
years
as a
teacher and the
testimony
of his students to
assert his
authority
and
implicitly
accuse the doctors of dilettantism. In a
reply
published
three weeks later
Diday
and
P?trequin
make an
authority
assertion of their
own:
The
fixity
of the
larynx (even
if it had been noted before
us)
is
nothing
but a sterile
fact,
without
implications,
when treated as an
isolated
phenomenon,
whereas its scientific worth
is
quite
different
when,
systematised
as it is in our
work,
it becomes the basis of an entire
theory
about the new mode of
singing.
[La
fixit? du
larynx (e?t-elle
m?me ?t? annonc?e avant
nous),
n'est
qu'un
fait st?rile et sans
port?e, lorsqu'on
se borne ? une indication
isol?e,
tandis
que
sa valeur
scientifique
est tout
45
The
presentation
took
place
on 16 November 1840.
46
Letter in the
Gazette
m?dicale de
Paris,
8
(27 June 1840),
407.
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30
Gregory
W. Bloch
autre
quand, syst?matis?
comme nous l'avons
fait,
il devient la base d'une doctrine
compl?te
sur ce nouveau mode de
chant.]47
In other
words,
it takes a
doctor,
not a
singing
teacher,
to reason from
description
to
explanation,
and raw
observation,
no matter how
extensive,
will never have valeur
scientifique.
Garcia's work
finally appeared
in
print
a
year
later and he marked the occasion
with another
letter,
this time
published
in the
Comptes-rendus
des s?ances de VAcad?mie
des Sciences
(and quoted
towards the
beginning
of this
article),
in which he
gestures
towards his 'fundamental'
system
of timbres and
registers.48
A
response signed by
Diday
alone restates
points
from the authors'
previous
letters in an even more
outraged
tone.49 In
Diday
and
P?trequin's subsequent publication,
the 'M?moire sur
la m?canisme de la voix de
fausset',
they
take the
opportunity
to attack Garcia
further.
Cataloguing existing
theories of
falsetto,
they
dismiss him in a
passage
oozing
with condescension:
One cannot call the work of M. Garcia on la voix humaine a
theory.
If it
suggests
an able
teacher,
if it includes several
good,
detailed remarks on the limitations of the two
registers
and the features of the second from an artistic
point
of
view,
it does not include a
single
physiological
observation that illuminates the mechanism of
falsetto;
nowhere is such an
explanation
even
attempted.
[On
ne
peut
donner le nom de th?orie au travail de M. Garcia sur la voix humaine. S'il d?note
un
professeur
habile,
s'il renferme
quelques
bonnes
remarques
de
d?tail,
au
point
de vue
artistique,
sur la d?limitation des deux
registres
et les
ph?nom?nes
du
second,
on
n'y
trouve
aucune observation
physiologique propre
? ?clairer le m?canisme du
fausset;
nulle
part
m?me cette
explication
n'est
essay?e.]50
One wonders whether the doctors ever saw Garcia's
laryngoscopic investigations
a
decade later
and,
if
so,
what their reaction was.
Certainly
no one
could accuse
Garcia's 'Observations
on
the Human Voice' of
lacking 'physiological
observa
tions'.
By
1854 the nature of research into the voice had
changed again
and Garcia
could connect differences in
pitch
and tone to
physiological
causes in a much more
specific
and accurate
way,
speaking
not
only
of
glottal
closure and
larynx height,
but
also
arytenoidal
adduction,
the
position
of the
epiglottis,
and the
length,
width and
thickness of the
glottal
folds. While
Diday
and
P?trequin
made
conjectures
about
the
degree
of
glottal
closure,
the
laryngoscopist
could
directly
observe the different
qualities
of the
glottis
at different times
during phonation.
The
power
of Garcia's observational methods meant that his
descriptions
would
endure
(though
with
repeated challenges)
well into the twentieth
century.
However,
if Garcia's
physiological
model won out over
competing
views in the
1850s,
how is
it that we have come to hold
something
like
Diday's
and
P?trequin's
view of
Duprez's
fundamental revolution?
(Garcia
mentions
Duprez's high
C as but
one
47
Letter in the
Galette
m?dicale de
Paris,
8(18 July 1840),
455.
48
Comptes-rendus,
12
(19 April 1841),
692-3;
see above.
49
Comptes-rendus,
12
(5 May 1841),
797.
5C
Diday
and
P?trequin,
'Voix de
fausset',
17.
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The
pathological
voice of Gilbert-Louis
Duprez
31
example
in a
list of famous moments
illustrating
his
categories,
a
list
containing
singers
of
Duprez's generation
and
before.51)
And
yet
our
myth
of
Duprez
does
not,
as the doctors
do,
position
the tenor as a
pathological specimen.
Rather,
it serves to
place
Nourrit and tenors
before Duprez
in more like that
category
-
or
perhaps just
the
category
of the
underdeveloped
and
primitive. Diday
and
P?trequin
called
Duprez revolutionary
because he seemed to
challenge
the facts of vocal
production
as
they
were then known. We have come to
imagine
him as
revolutionary
because
we have
forgotten
that
any
other
conception
of
singing
was ever
possible.
1
Garcia mentions
Duprez's high
C in
Tell,
but as an
example
of timbre clair en
registre
de
poitrine
rather than timbre sombre. He
groups
it with other
passages
in
performances
'known to
all',
including Luigi
Lablache in 77 matrimonio
segreto,
Nicolas Levasseur in Robert le diable and his
own
father,
Garcia
Sr.,
in Don
Giovanni; Garcia,
Trait?
complet,
9.
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